Rescuing Christmas: Part Two

The emergence of holiday trees, winter breaks or, worse, the banning of tree displays and the colors red and green, right down to the Christmas cookie icing, are battles in what John Gibson calls a war in his new book, The War on Christmas: How the Liberal Plot to Ban the Sacred Christian Holiday is Worse Than You Thought.

Gibson, Fox News channel anchor and host of The Big Story, believes it is a combination of people over-advocating tolerance and people who worship secularism who are waging the war on Christmas.

At the Heritage Foundation on Dec. 6, Gibson told stories ranging from mild to outrageous examples of the banning of Christmas. He told the story of how the Covington, Georgia schools decided to change the name of their Christmas break to winter break a couple of years ago. There was one particular man who thought this was stupid, not because he was religious, but because a majority of people in the country celebrate Christmas.

“The poor guy made the mistake of saying, ‘Why, this is a Christian nation,’ and an ACLU lawyer came from Atlanta,” said Gibson of how Covington lost their battle for Christmas.

Gibson spoke to the ACLU lawyer and the lawyer said, “Calling the break ‘Christmas’ would coerce children into becoming Christians.”

In an October My Word column on Foxnews.com, Gibson was discussing this same story and he wrote, “There is nothing illegal about calling Christmas vacation ‘Christmas vacation.’ The Supreme Court has never declared it unconstitutional. And I am willing to bet that if an ACLU lawyer ever came to the Supreme Court arguing that the word Christmas somehow coerces kids into becoming Christians, the sound we would all hear would be side-splitting laughter from the normally solemn justices of the Supreme Court.”

One Plano (Texas) School District’s attempts to kill Christmas in the schools ended up in court, which is where the fight is still going on. According to the Alliance Defense Fund’s Senior Counsel, Gary McCaleb, “School officials have gone so far as to prohibit students from wearing red and green at their ‘winter break’ parties…prohibited students from exchanging candy canes and pencils with religious messages on them, using reindeer symbols, or writing ‘Merry Christmas’ on greeting cards to U.S. soldiers.”

After this occurred, attorneys with ADF and Liberty Legal Institute filed a federal civil rights suit against the school district claiming the policy was a discriminatory one that “censors the Christmas religious expression of students and their parents.” The case is currently in federal court in Dallas, according to Gibson.

Unfortunately, these past examples from Gibson’s book are not preventing a slew of new attacks on Christmas this year. In Memphis, Tennessee, Brandi Chambless wanted to put up an announcement at her local library for her church’s upcoming Christmas production, and she had a nativity scene to go with it. The library accepted the announcement but said that “she would have to remove the ‘inappropriate’ figures of the baby Jesus, Joseph, Mary and the wise men” from her nativity scene in order to have it put on the community shelves, according to the Alliance Defense Fund (ADF). The shelves traditionally have been open to many groups and individuals within that community.

The ADF is a legal organization that is dedicated to “defending the right to hear and speak the truth through strategy, training, funding, and litigation,” according to their Web site. In response to the library’s action, the ADF’s Nate Kellum sent a letter to the Memphis/Shelby County libraries in which he told them “It is blatantly unconstitutional for the government to single out speech from a church for discrimination simply because it is religious.” A few days later, the library backed down and allowed the full display to be placed on itsshelves, ADF reported.

On Dec. 7, the Catholic League reported that Christmas trees have been renamed Holiday trees in at least six cities and one university; renamed Giving trees at five colleges; renamed Grand trees, Union trees, Peace trees and Friendship Trees in a number of other places. CL president Bill Donohue said in the release, “Yesterday, I was told by a rabbi on the Tampa, Florida Fox News TV channel that the Christmas tree is a religious symbol. When I told him that the Supreme Court has rightly declared it a secular symbol, he said the high court was wrong. I then asked him if he knew any Christians who worshipped the tree, and he admitted he did not.”

In Jacksonville, Florida, there is a joint Town Center Park between Neptune Beach and Atlantic Beach. In the park there is a Christmas tree that was lit in a public ceremony, and a large menorah is also on display because it was approved by the towns. But Ken Koenig requested permission to display a nativity scene on the communal property and was refused, according to the Liberty Counsel, an Orlando-based non-profit group that litigates cases, educates and seeks to influence policy on religious freedom issues. A federal lawsuit has been filed by Liberty Counsel arguing that the exclusion of the nativity “constitutes viewpoint discrimination.”

The Glendale-River Hills School District in Wisconsin is prohibiting any song in their music programs from having religious “motive or theme,” but Hanukkah and secular songs are still alright, according to the Liberty Counsel. District administrator Francis Smith defended the position by telling the Liberty Counsel that Hanukkah songs are “more cultural than spiritual.”

In Dodgeville, Wisconsin the Ridgeway Elementary school will not be using any Christian Christmas songs and even went so far as to use the tune of the beloved carol Silent Night to sing a meaningless secular song Cold in the Night. According to the Liberty Counsel, the school has decorated classrooms with Santa Claus, Menorahs, Labafana the Christmas witch and Kwanzaa décor. The Liberty Counsel has informed both school districts of the law and said that they will sue if policies are not modified.

Clearly, there is a war on Christmas and the battles keep raging. In classrooms and courtrooms, and over Christmas cookies and candy canes, what is not certain yet is who will win: the majority of people who want a Merry Christmas or the people pushing out Christian observance of the holiday so as not to offend the tiny minority of people who have a problem with it.

Julia A. Seymour is a staff writer for Accuracy in Academia.